Frank Paulin grew up in New York and Chicago and studied photography with the likes of Laszlo Maholy-Nagy and Harry Callahan in the mid-1940's and later attended the classes of the legendary Alexey Brodovich at the New School.

Paulin is best-known for his street photography in NYC taken in the late 1950s. His photos were less about people (compared to well-known street photographers Robert Frank and William Klein) and more about both perception and illusion of everyday life. Paulin's images convey a sense of a complex interaction of people and places, and include poignant moments of humanity.

He photographed first in black and white, and like fellow photographer Saul Leiter, experimented with early color works. These color images have been hidden away in boxes and entirely unseen by the public. Paulin, now at age 83, is personally printing his own dye pigment prints from these original Kodachrome transparencies. His muted color palette harkens his four-decade career as a fashion illustrator along with the fading of the dyes used in Kodachrome itself.

Frank Paulin's work is included in the permanent collections of: Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Museum of the City of New York, New York, NY; Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ; Hungarian Museum of Photography, Kecskemet, Hungary.